Glen Hooks
We are the proud bearers of good news from the 2016 election cycle!
No, really. It's true. Read on.
Cathy Corkery and I are, respectively, the Chapter Directors of the New Hampshire and Arkansas Sierra Clubs. This year, we volunteered for Sierra Club's "Victory Corps" electoral effort, and were each assigned to represent Sierra Club on the campaigns of Club-endorsed federal candidates in New Hampshire. I helped Governor Maggie Hassan's US Senate bid and Cathy stepped into former US Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter's effort to return to the US House of Representatives.
New Hampshire has a well-deserved reputation as a swing state full of independent thinkers and voters. Polls for the presidential race were tight all year long, and the down-ballot races reflected a similar split. Granite Staters take an enormous amount of pride in their politics -- an incredibly high number of well-attended candidate forums and debates were held across the state, and voters were highly engaged.
Even by New Hampshire standards, though, our two races were unusual. The US Senate race featured two popular female statewide elected officials: a sitting Democratic Governor (Hassan) taking on a sitting Republican US Senator (Ayotte). The Congressional race was the fourth consecutive time that Shea-Porter had faced Republican Congressman Frank Guinta--the two had traded the seat back-and-forth--but this year featured a twist: a wealthy and self-funded Independent who threatened to play spoiler.
The Sierra Club Victory Corps campaigns were relatively simple in scope: we spent half of our time doing outreach to New Hampshire Sierra Club members and supporters, and half of our time doing whatever the campaign needed us to do. That translated into Sierra Clubbers knocking on thousands of doors and making thousands of phone calls, doing visibility events for the candidates, holding events to highlight the Sierra Club's endorsement or the candidates' environmental records, and the like.
On election night, the races were deadly close and the vote counts teetered back and forth in and out of our favor. At around 5 a.m., Carol Shea-Porter was declared the winner by a 44-43% margin (about 5000 votes). In the US Senate race, Maggie Hassan was not certified the winner until mid-afternoon the following day. We huddled up and made plans for the inevitable recount -- until Senator Ayotte surprised everyone by conceding around 5 p.m. The final margin of victory for Maggie Hassan was barely more than 1/10 of one percent--around 1000 votes out of 738,000 cast.
As a direct result of electing Maggie Hassan and Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire will have the very first all-female Democratic congressional delegation in American history.
By razor-thin margins, New Hampshire voters chose Maggie Hassan for the US Senate, and Carol Shea-Porter for Congress. I'm exceptionally proud that the Sierra Club was heavily embedded in these campaigns. Our volunteers and staff can legitimately and proudly claim that our efforts made a significant difference in these close races.
As for me, I know that the next time I'm tired of knocking doors or making phone calls, I'm going to summon my new personal mantra: "ONE-TENTH OF ONE PERCENT", and push myself a little bit harder and further.